Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
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HOW fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean | |
Are Thy returns! ev’n as the flowers in spring; | |
To which besides their own demean, 1 | |
The late-pass’d frosts tributes of pleasure bring. | |
Grief melts away | 5 |
Like snow in May, | |
As if there were no such cold thing. | |
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Who would have thought my shrivell’d heart | |
Could have recover’d greenness? It was gone | |
Quite underground; as flowers depart | 10 |
To see their mother-root, when they have blown; | |
Where they together | |
All the hard weather, | |
Dead to the world, keep house unknown. | |
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These are Thy wonders, Lord of power, | 15 |
Killing and quick’ning, bringing down to hell | |
And up to heaven in an hour; | |
Making a chiming of a passing-bell. | |
We say amiss, | |
This or that is: | 20 |
Thy word is 2 all, if we could spell. | |
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O that I once pass’d changing were, | |
Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! | |
Many a spring I shoot up fair, | |
Off’ring at heaven, growing and groaning thither: | 25 |
Nor doth my flower | |
Want a spring-shower, | |
My sins and I joining together: | |
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But while I grow in a straight line, | |
Still upwards bent, as if heav’n were mine own, | 30 |
Thy anger comes, and I decline: | |
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone | |
Where all things burn, | |
When thou dost turn, | |
And the least frown of Thine is shown? | 35 |
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And now in age I bud again, | |
After so many deaths I live and write; | |
I once more smell the dew and rain | |
And relish versing: O my only light, | |
It cannot be | 40 |
That I am he | |
On whom Thy tempests fell all night. | |
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These are Thy wonders, Lord of love, | |
To make us see we are but flowers that glide: | |
Which when we once can find and prove, | 45 |
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide. | |
Who would be more, | |
Swelling through store, | |
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. | |